loneliness is the fracture that never heals quite right.
[This is a tale of bb!Binshou and bb!Yukio, and I only hope I got little Yukio right by
tatterpixie!]
"LASER ATTACK!"
Every muscle in Binshou’s body froze when he heard the shoes of the other six-year-olds thumping on the pavement behind him. A hand came from nowhere and slapped his book from his grasp, and it was like a jolt of electricity through his body.
"Ha! I shot the book right from your hands! Now your secret plans are ours!"
Another child swooped in and picked it off the ground.
"Stop!" Binshou’s shout was pure instinct, and unnecessary, as the three boys turned to face him once they were just out of arms’ reach.
"What? It’s just a book. It doesn’t even have any pictures."
"No way you can read all these kanji!" one of them said, flipping through the pages. "You just pretend to! You just want to look smarter than us!"
Binshou shook his head and didn’t speak, afraid that if he did, he’d no longer be able to hold back the tears that were stinging the corners of his eyes.
"We’ll keep it and we’ll write something good in it!”
Suddenly, flames erupted from the open pages of the book. The boys dropped it with a shriek and scrambled away.
No one had seen or heard the tall boy with the too-long fringe approach, and when he bent down to retrieve the book, it didn’t seem burnt at all. The boys took another step back when he turned his yellow eyes on them, but he remained silent. The tiny black puppy by his side made up for this by yelping as fiercely as it could.
"Oh, it’s just the Weirdo," said one of the boys, mustering as much aggression as he could.
"You think we’re scared of you, Yukio? We just avoid you because no one likes you!"
"I don’t even want that stupid book, anyway. Let’s just get away from him."
And they ran off, their shouts of “Weirdo!” and “Alien!” and “Double Laser Attack!” echoing down the street.
Yukio turned back to his shorter classmate, and silently offered him the book. Binshou accepted it, slowly and with some hesitation, glancing from the solemn boy to the long-haired chihuahua that was now wagging its tail and looking quite pleased.
It did not occur to Binshou that Yukio might be waiting for his thanks, or any response, really. He just stared, and blinked and sniffled. Why was everyone around him so scary?
When he was little, he’d had dreams of other people-seven wonderful people, and not his parents!-out there in the world, just waiting for him to find them. People who would like him, and be kind to him. And he’d figured out quite early that none of them were at school. Most likely, they were only in his head.
Finally, Yukio just nodded at him. “Be careful.” And he walked away, the puppy following at his heels.
Alone at last, Binshou took a deep breath. And another. And he hugged his book to his chest. And as he watched Yukio growing smaller in the distance, he decided that maybe he, at least, wasn’t so scary. He’d just saved his book, after all. (And he had a puppy.)
Making friends in the real world was hard-maybe impossible-but he could try. He could start with “thank you”.
Binshou ran down the sidewalk and shouted as loud as he could (which was not very loud at all): “wait!”
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